Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Concepcion Picciotto, who held vigil outside the White House for decades, dies

Friends,

If you were a protester at the White House, you knew
Concepcion. She defined the word dedicated. In an antiwar protest
circa 2006, we took a coffin to the White House from Lafayette Park. The
police did not arrest our delegation, so when we returned to the park we saw
members of the Fire Department dousing a fire at the anti-nuke display.
It seems members of the nut-case Freeper movement torched it. I don't
know if the Freepers are still active, but they were quite a nuisance in those
days.

Concepcion
Picciotto, the protester who maintained a peace
vigil outside the White House for more than three decades, a demonstration
widely considered to be the longest-running act of political protest in U.S.
history, died Jan. 25 at a housing facility operated by N Street Village,
a nonprofit that supports homeless women in Washington. She was believed to be
80.

She had
recently suffered a fall, but the immediate cause of death was not known, said
Schroeder Stribling, the shelter’s executive director.

Ms.
Picciotto — a Spanish immigrant known to many as “Connie” or “Conchita” — was
the primary guardian of the anti-nuclear-proliferation vigil stationed along
Pennsylvania Avenue.

Through her
presence, she said she hoped to remind others to take whatever action they
could, however small, to help end wars and stop violence, particularly against
children.

Ms.
Picciotto, a diminutive woman perpetually clad in a helmet and headscarf, was a
curious and at times controversial figure in Washington. Fellow activists
lauded her as a heroine. Critics and even casual passersby, reading her
hand-lettered signs, dismissed her as foolish, perhaps unwell. Ms. Picciotto
was quick to share elaborate accounts of persecution by the government, which
she considered responsible for many of her physical ailments.

Ellen
Thomas, a demonstrator who protested alongside Ms. Picciotto for decades, told
The Post in 2013 that the truth was somewhere in between. She acknowledged that
there were “issues that haven’t been addressed” where Ms. Picciotto’s mental
health was concerned but lauded her dedication and stamina.

Ms.
Picciotto spoke little of her life before 1960, when she emigrated to New York
City and worked as a receptionist for the economic and commercial office of the
Spanish Embassy. She met an Italian man who became her husband in 1969, with
whom she adopted an infant daughter, she said.

Ms.
Picciotto first came to the White House in 1979, she said, after she came to
believe that her husband had orchestrated an illegal adoption and arranged to
have Ms. Picciotto separated from their child and committed. She believed she
was the target of a web of conspiracies — involving doctors, lawyers and the
government — and hoped that elected officials could help get her daughter back.

But that
never happened. Ms. Picciotto said she last saw the child when the girl was a
toddler.

She had just
given up on reconnecting with her daughter when she metWilliam Thomas, a self-described wanderer,
philosopher and peace activist who founded the peace vigil along Pennsylvania
Avenue. Ms. Picciotto joined Thomas there in 1981 — since she could not help
her own child, she said, she wanted to do what she could to help other children
— and the two became a fixture in the park.

They were
joined in 1984 by Ellen Benjamin, who soon married Thomas. The budding romance
sparked hostility from Ms. Picciotto, who questioned Ellen Thomas’s motives for
joining the protest and believed the new woman was after William Thomas’s
money.

But despite
that perpetual tension, Ellen Thomas told The Post, the trio protested together
in the park for 25 years. The group’s grass-roots nuclear disarmament campaign
was known as Proposition One, and its crowning achievement came in 1993, when a
nuclear disarmament petition circulated by the activists resulted in a ballot
initiative passed by District voters.

Eleanor
Holmes Norton, the District’s congressional delegate, helped the activists
prepare a nuclear disarmament and conversion act, which she has since
introduced in nearly a dozen sessions of Congress. The legislation has never
reached the floor for a vote.

Norton told
The Post in 2013 that although the value of the vigil’s presence could not be
readily quantified, it has served as an important and ongoing reminder to all
who passed by.

“They want
to keep the issue of nuclear proliferation and its potential terrible
consequences before the public,” Norton said of the protesters. “And they have
chosen a prime spot to do it. ... We won’t
ever know what the success is, because it doesn’t have a specific end of the
kind we are used to.”

From their
rudimentary encampment on the red-brick walkway in Lafayette Square, the
protesters demonstrated against wars and military conflicts, survived historic
blizzards and scorching heat waves, and endured tense confrontations with
passersby and police.

The vigil
evolved into a well-recognized feature of the city’s landscape. The makeshift
shelter became a regular stop for D.C. tour guides and a topic of discussion in
local college classrooms. The vigil and its keepers made a cameo appearance in
Michael Moore’s 2004 political documentary film “Fahrenheit 9/11” and starred
in another feature-length documentary, “The Oracles of Pennsylvania Avenue”
(2011).

When Thomas
died in 2009, Ms. Picciotto vowed to continue her protest in his honor. But the
vigil’s future was called into question in recent years, as its aging caretaker
faced health problems and the possibility of eviction from the home she shared
with other activists in Northwest Washington.

After Ms.
Picciotto was hit by a cab in 2012 while riding her bicycle, she came to rely
heavily on the help of younger activists to maintain the vigil, which could not
be left unattended, according to National Park Service rules.

For months,
the activists — many of whom lived with Ms. Picciotto at Peace House, a
rowhouse owned by Ellen Thomas — took turns guarding the vigil, allowing Ms.
Picciotto to scale back her watch to just a few hours each day.

But on two occasions in recent years, activists
abandoned their station during overnight shifts, and the shelter and its
signs were quickly removed by police. In both
instances, the station and its signs were later returned by authorities.

Peace House
was sold last year,, and Ms. Picciotto eventually found shelter at N Street
Village, within walking distance of her vigil. “I have to be here,” she said of
her work. “This is my life.”

"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs